Emergency Power Improvements

Project Specifications

Start-up Year2006

Project Cost$1.2 million

Construction TypeExisting Facility

Cincinnati Bell enlisted Fosdick & Hilmer to evaluate, design, develop, and commission a sophisticated electric power automation system for its Seventh Street building complex. The complex houses the Company’s network operations center; the City’s E-911 system; local and long distance central office switching equipment; as well as high-availability data centers for a number of corporate clients.

Complete automation of the power outage restoration process. This has historically been a manual process, performed by a trained technician visiting a number of power distribution rooms throughout the facility. Automation includes prioritized load addition and shedding, based on available emergency generation.

Overhaul of system protection and coordination, including the installation of digital protective relays.

Extensive alarm and event notification services by pager, text messaging, and e-mail, as well as remote access for facility managers.

To accomplish the automation objectives, more than 150 existing, manually controlled circuit breakers were wired into the automation system and commissioned, with little or no interruption of service to tenants. Existing current and voltage instrument transformers, originally installed for manual meter reading, were connected to networked digital circuit monitors at an equipment cost of less than $200 per feeder.